SEO – Top Keyword Tools for Businesses and Web Designers

At Dockery Design, we often have to explain how keyword selection is one of the first steps to having your business’ SEO (search engine optimization) strategy implemented. It is extremely important that the right keywords are selected by businesses for their advertisements in order to gain profits and maximize their online advertising service. Your advertising campaign will prove fruitless if the wrong keywords are selected to represent it.

In a nutshell, SEO includes several methods that aim to improve the position or rank of your website in listings produced by search engines such as Google, MSN, Bing, and Yahoo. Getting a higher placement in the listings increases the chances that online visitors will view your pages and services. The same is true when advertising online. It gives visitors a feeling of security, because a well-positioned ad often equals high credibility.

Sites have different goals when it comes to optimization. Some sites employ a broad SEO (search Engine Optimization) strategy, where they are in search for any traffic that comes their way. It can be useful for sites that generates broad interest, such as a directory or a stable periodical. Other sites utilize keywords that are highly specific, and this creates a higher probability of a sale. In most cases, going for specific and carefully chosen traffic will prove most advantageous, because it gives a higher quality sales lead.

The process of choosing the appropriate keywords for your advertising is not a simple task. An advertiser has to accomplish several things to pull it off successfully. First, the advertiser has to be well acquainted with their target market. Tyler Dockery of Dockery Design suggests a thorough research into the keywords used by your competitor should be carried out, and whatever results it produces should be analyzed in detail. Keyword selection tools such as those listed below can assist advertisers in determining the keywords which are most suited for their business and their clients.

Keywords selected can have many varieties, largely depending on the kind of web site that you need. If an advertiser is creating a brand new site, it is recommended they choose the initial number of keywords that will be needed (and Tyler Dockery suggests 4-6 is a great start), and afterward, the architecture of the site can be prepared using the keyword selection criteria as a basis. Your content should be written to reflect these keywords, and any related words which should be used to keep the content accurate: specifically, kill as many “stop words” as possible (find out more about SEO “stop words”), but build your content to make sense, avoid stuffing too many keywords into the text or you will be considered a spam site, and may get blacklisted. Try to stay around 5%.

After coming up with your keyword list, these terms should be trimmed down up to the most specific and necessary . In narrowing down your list, keep these factors in mind: Most visitors type keywords in lower case, and it is less difficult to gain a good rank for keyword phrases that are longer.

Here are some of the popular keyword selection tools available for advertisers:

1. Google AdWords Keyword Selection Tool
Google is the most successful search engine in the world, and it takes in far more searches on the web than its competitors. This tool usually comes with the awards program of Google, and it shows the keywords which are actually utilized by users. Google AdWords provide users with the most sought-after queries, vast matches, and other keywords that the user may consider for usage.

2. Google Rankings
This online database is streamlined and easy to use. Give it your web address or domain, and it will scan your existing content and SUGGEST keywords for you. This tool is a must-use if your site already exists.

2. Wordtracker
It is a database that people utilize as queries for searching terms. Aside from giving information on how often a term is utilized for web search, it will also inform users the number of competing sites that utilize the same term. The tool aids in finding combination of keywords that is in any way related to the content of a web site.

3. Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
A keyword selection tool that provides the number of searches in a month that proliferated within the Overture network. It provides the variations and phrase stems when a certain keyword is used. It also provides pay-per-click bids and a ROI Time CPM Calculator.

4. Keyword Destiny and Prominence Analysis
A keyword analysis tool which analyzes the words utilized on a web page by applying default settings or custom report options. It also reports on the number of times the word was used, and an analysis of a competitive URL. Other information provided includes word count, prominence values, the location of the significant keywords in the elements of the page, and density percentages.

Advertisers should choose the best tools that works for them. With various options available, it will not be too difficult to do so. Picking the right tool can make wonders for their business ventures.

Do you have a favorite, or one that I have missed? Please let me know!